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NOT REVIEWED YET
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Author Clint Smith joins Walter Isaacson to discuss his book 'How the Word Is Passed' and how America confronts the legacy of slavery across historical sites.
Uploaded by Amanpour and Company, 2022 · Watch on YouTube ·
Smith explains that his book title comes from a descendant of an enslaved family at Monticello recorded during an oral history project. He felt the phrase captured how historical knowledge travels through descendants, guides, and communities outside traditional textbooks.
Smith observed tourists on a Monticello tour who were visibly shocked to learn that Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people. He notes that many people make cross-country pilgrimages to historic sites without knowing they were functioning slave plantations.
Smith distinguishes between monuments to Confederate leaders and monuments to slaveholding founders like Jefferson. He argues Confederate statues belong off public property because the Confederacy was openly predicated on treason and slavery, whereas founders require full historical context.
Smith highlights that Louisiana State Penitentiary operates on an 18,000-acre former plantation where mostly Black incarcerated men perform field labor under armed guards. He was disturbed to find the prison's museum gift shop selling mugs that jokingly advertise the facility as a gated community.
Smith stresses that American slavery is not ancient history, pointing out that his own grandparents were born in the 1930s under Jim Crow. He highlights that the woman who rang the bell opening the Smithsonian's African American history museum in 2016 was the daughter of an enslaved person.
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